This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

"Place in the Sun" will be found on most top 100 lists of the greatest movies of all time, and deservedly so. It has George Stevens a top producer/director and an unbeatable cast right down to the smallest part. The film won several Academy Awards (including best picture and best Director) and was nominated for several more.The film opens with George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) hitch hiking from Chicago to California. Coming from a religious store front mission family, George is coming to seek employment with his rich uncle's clothing manufacturing firm. He is cautioned not to fraternize with the company's female employees but strikes up a relationship with co-worker Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters).At a party at the Eastman estate, George meets the beautiful daughter, Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor), of the Eastman's wealthy neighbors. George is immediately smitten with her. Meanwhile Alice learns that she is pregnant and begins to pressure George into marrying her. While on holiday with the Vickers, Alice shows up at the local bus station and demands that George come to her immediately or else she will tell all of her predicament.George is forced to go to her and agrees to marry her only to find the Court House closed for the Labor Day holiday. George then devises a plan to eliminate Alice. He relents at the last minute but the boat they were in capsizes and the woman drowns. Several witnesses identify George as the the "man in the boat" and he is quickly arrested and charged with murder.A trial ensues with D.A. Frank Marlowe (Raymond Burr) prosecuting and Bellows (Fred Clark) and Jansen (Walter Sande), attorneys for the defense. Although George has a plausible story, the jury........................................Elizabeth Taylor was only 17 when this movie was made and this proved to be a breakthrough adult role for her. She was already one of the most beautiful women in the world. The brooding, mysterious method actor Montgomery Clift, at this point, had become a major star and the two would become life long friends. Shelley Winters was de-glamorized for her role and she too proved that she could act.Raymond Burr's performance as the D.A. could almost be said to have been an audition for his future role as Perry Mason in the long running TV series. I was also impressed by the performance of veteran "B" western actor Walter Sande as defense attorney Art Jansen.Others in the cast include Anne Revere in a brief appearance as Clift's mother, Herbert Hayes and Katherine Givney as the Eastmans, Shepperd Strudwick and Freda Inescourt as the Vickers, rising star Keefe Brasselle as the Eastman son Earl and veteran heavy Ted DeCorsia as the trial judge.A true classic in every sense of the word.

A Place in the Sun is one of the most beautiful, glamorous classic films of all time. Yes, there are epics like Gone with the Wind, but for quiet, black and white splendors, you'll be hard pressed to find a more beautiful film than A Place in the Sun.Montgomery Clift is a man in pursuit of the American Dream. He's a hard worker, but he can't quite shake where he comes from. In his loneliness, he enters into a relationship with Shelley Winters. She's common, and she knows she's not beautiful, so she's constantly afraid he'll leave her. Enter Elizabeth Taylor.Monty steps into the high-class world and falls in love with the lifestyle, the glamour, the freedom, and the girl. Liz is perfection, the apex of the American Dream. The only question is how badly does he want her? What will he do to get her? Screenwriters Harry Brown and Michael Wilson had their work cut out for them. The book was titled An American Tragedy and it was 900 pages. I've read the book, and I don't know how they sifted through the tome and still kept their sanity.Winner of Oscars in Directing, Cinematography, Costume Design, Editing, Original Score, and Adapted Screenplay, and nominated for Actor, Actress, and Picture, A Place in the Sun is a must-see classic. The tragic story stands the test of time beautifully, and it's always wonderful to watch gorgeous people in gorgeous clothes up on the big screen, set to a lovely score.

"An American Tragedy" is a novel by Theodore Dreiser. It is a long complex novel, but in its essentials it boils down to this: boy meets girl, boy gets girl pregnant, boy meet another girl he likes better, boy kills the first girl, boy is executed for murder.They have names, of course: the boy is Clyde, the first girl is Roberta, and the second girl is Sondra. Now, Clyde doesn't actually kill Roberta. He planned to drown her and make it look like an accident. He gets her out into the middle of the lake in a rowboat, knowing she cannot swim. But then he thinks he cannot do it. But then he thinks he will. He might as well be picking petals off a daisy: "I kill her, I kill her not, I kill her, I kill her not." Anyway, she ends up falling overboard and drowns just as he was thinking, "I kill her not." Notwithstanding all the planning he put into this murder that he changed his mind on at the last minute but which had the same result anyway, his identity is discovered, he is tried for murder, convicted, and executed.The first film adaptation, released in 1931, has the same title as the novel, and the three principal characters have the same names. The second adaptation, made in 1951, has a title that is different from the novel, "A Place in the Sun," and the characters have different names. Don't ask me why. In most respects, the second adaptation is a much better movie. It was directed by George Stevens, starring Montgomery Clift as Clyde = George; Shelley Winters as Roberta = Alice; and Elizabeth Taylor as Sondra = Angela. (For the sake of consistency, I will continue to the use the names in the novel.)But in one respect, the first adaptation is better, and so much so in this respect that I prefer it to the second. In the movie "An American Tragedy," Roberta is played by Silvia Sidney. We readily believe in her naïve innocence. She seems like the Roberta of the novel, a woman we like and feel sorry for. As noted above, however, in "A Place in the Sun," Roberta is played by Shelley Winters. I don't know what Shelley Winters was like as a person, but her screen persona simply is not the sweet, innocent virgin for whom we are supposed to have sympathy because she was taken advantage of by a man. On the contrary, she seems suited for roles in which she is a hardboiled broad, as in "Alfie" (1966) or "Bloody Mama" (1970). As a result, when she is taken advantage of by a man in a movie, we are more likely to think she is dumb than naïve.Partly as a result of this difference, we are sad when Silvia Sidney's Roberta drowns. As for Shelley Winters' Roberta, however, we know we are supposed to feel sorry for her, and we do a little bit, but the fact is that we never really mind when Shelley Winters dies in a movie. For example, the fact that she drowns in "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) does not spoil our sense that the movie has a happy ending. A third movie in which Shelley Winters drowns is "The Night of the Hunter" (1955), murdered by her newlywed psychopathic husband, played by Robert Mitchum. Now, Robert Mitchum's character, Harry Powell, is supposed to be as bad as they come, so you would think they would have allowed him to kill a more likable actress, like Jane Wyatt, for instance, so that we would really think Harry is evil. But they picked Shelley Winters to be his victim so that we would not spend the rest of the movie feeling sorry for her.In other words, if "A Place in the Sun" had starred an actress to play Roberta who would have been more believably innocent and whose death would have been more disturbing, then we would have been appropriately outraged that Clyde would have even thought about abandoning her, let alone make elaborate plans to murder her, just as we are when we read the novel. But with Shelley Winters playing the part, her death really seems to be no great loss, and we end up feeling sorrier for Clyde, played by the likable Montgomery Clift, than we do for Roberta.

i agonized for quite some time debating whether another review was warranted. is there anything that i could add that hasn't been said? yes: 1. that george eastman could be any one of us at some point in our lives - a hot mess. and this is where it hits home. i suspect the negative reviews of apits is founded upon the maxim: "if you spot it you got it". men are uncomfortable with seeing that in themselves. the only other equal to this movie could possibly be the talented mr. ripley. 2. there was a synopsis that said alice tripp latched on to george eastman like a vice. unfortunately, this is true. after she found out that george is a coward, a liar, and a cheater, alice should have walked away. but that's easy for me to say. i don't have to raise a child on my own. part of what makes this such a great movie is that alice is a trusting, sweet, young, and beautiful woman. only a fool would walk away from that, and this is exactly where i can relate. i want to say that a lying, cheating, coward is going to get his comeuppance, but then i think which one of us has led a perfect life? not me, that's for sure.